Dance Of The Far Northern Sky

Listen. It’s a cold moonless night in a small town
on the bleak secluded edge of the Arctic Circle.
Hush now. Time passes. Hush now. The locals are all sleeping.
During the long dark months, on nights such as this one,
an ancient portal opens between this world and the next.
For this reason, we’ve been sleeping with the curtains open.
And finally, at a little before 5 in the morning, they come for us.
Hush now. A hoarfrost whisper on the raw North Wind.
I rise and stand naked at the window, my pale English skin
illuminated by the underglow of the street-lamps below.
I stand there dumbfounded. Compelled. Entranced. As still as a frozen ocean.
What was it I wonder, that Jules Verne’s intrepid adventurers
had hoped to discover beneath the glacier, that they couldn’t
more easily have found in the winter sky above their heads?
Hand-in-hand they dance before us. Carried aloft by 12 Valkyries on horseback.
Hush now. A chorus of empyreal will-o'-wisps, chasing their many green tails.
Up beyond the icebound headlands. Up beyond the icebound scree.
Visitors, not of this Earth. Trapped somewhere between us
and the bands of Orion’s belt. Hostages to the high latitude.
I watch them flutter then ripple then eddy then skip.
She watches them flutter then ripple then eddy then skip.
Pull your head from out of your neck, lift up your face, and bear witness.
A Supercommunion with The Cosmos. A glimpse of The All Thought.
A reminder that this world below is still in the process of being created.
Gaze upon them for long enough, and simple words cease to have any meaning.
Gaze upon them for long enough, and eventually they begin to fade.
Beckoned by her smile, I return to the warmth of the hotel mattress.
We lay together, electrically-charged by our visitation.
Dawn is still another 4 or 5 hours away, but
there promises to be good fishing tomorrow.
That 40-pound brown trout may yet still be mine.

Moving Images Of The Aurora Borealis From Space